About this Course

As a human being, we all consume products and/or services all the time. This morning you got up and ate your breakfast, e.g., eggs, milk, bread, fresh fruits, and the like. After the breakfast, you drove your car to work or school. At your office, you used your computer, perhaps equipped with 27” LCD monitor. During your break, you drank a cup of coffee and played with your iPhone. So on and so forth. You probably take it for granted that you can enjoy all of these products. But if you take a closer look at how each of these products can be made and eventually delivered to you, you will realize that each one of these is no short of miracle. For example, which fruit do you like? Consider fresh strawberries. In order for the strawberries to be on your breakfast table, there must be numerous functions, activities, transactions, and people involved in planting, cultivating, delivering, and consuming strawberries. Moreover, all of these functions, activities, transactions, and people are connected as an integral chain, through which physical products like strawberries themselves and virtual elements such as information and communication flow back and forth constantly. By grouping related functions or activities, we have a supply chain, comprised of four primary functions such as supplier, manufacturer, distributor, and finally consumer. A supply chain is essentially a value chain.
For the society or economy as a whole, the goal is to maximize value, i.e., to create satisfactory value without spending too much. In order to create the maximum value for the strawberry supply chain, every participant in the chain must carry out its function efficiently. In addition, all of the members must coordinate with each other effectively in order to ensure value maximization. We have to face the same issues for almost all the products and services we take for granted in our everyday life, e.g., cars, hamburgers, haircuts, surgeries, movies, banks, restaurants, and you name it!
In this course, we want to understand fundamental principles of value creation for the consumers or the market. We try to answer questions like how the product or service is made, how the value-creating activities or functions are coordinated, who should play what leadership roles in realizing all these, and so on. As our course title hints, we approach all of these issues from a learning perspective, which is dynamic in nature and emphasizes long-term capability building rather than short-term symptomatic problem solving....

Top reviews

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By MP

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Apr 04, 2017

Thank you for giving me excellent information on supply chain management.It is very helpful course for me. Thank you Korea advanced institute of science and technology and coursera.

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By SS

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Aug 01, 2016

I was really an honor to have certification under KAIST and professor Bowon Kim, it was really a great experience to have this certification under your guidance. Thank you.

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112 Reviews

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By Monique Furuta Gomes de Barros

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Mar 03, 2019

I have learned a lot about administrating time and other important aspects of logistics.

I can apply it also in personal life, and I am moving much smoothly in the city by myself.

Cheers! :)

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By sergio andres ottone dauvin

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Feb 28, 2019

Clear and easy teaching,

thanks mister Kim.

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By j duhsanga

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Feb 21, 2019

it helps me a lot in the field of management

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By Abdul wahab khan

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Feb 21, 2019

Thank you so much Professor Bowon Kim for giving us your precious time and knowledge. I learnt a lot of things in this course.

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By Omulu Obiora Lawrence

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Feb 19, 2019

Is an endless opportunity course

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By Debojit Sengupta

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Jan 19, 2019

This course beautifully lays out major concepts involved in Supply Chain Management. It is great foundation course for a beginner who is interested in taking up this subject.

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By Hermann Njike

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Dec 24, 2018

Excellent Course... I highly recommend it for beginner or aspire SC Manager

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By muhammad shafay kalim

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Dec 17, 2018

wonderful to learn.thanks coursera

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By Ahmed Barsheed

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Nov 25, 2018

Nice overall all course on SCM.

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By Khurram Ahmed

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Nov 22, 2018

Its a great course for anyone interested to learn basics of supply chain management. The course deals mostly with philosophical and managerial areas and does not include much analytical problem solving.